I am currently engaged in a joint collaboration with Dr. R. Fletterick to determine the 3-dimensional structure of the rat and human thyroid hormone receptors. We recently published the structure of the rat alpha ligand binding domain and are currently working on the human beta ligand binding domain. We will be comparing the structure with various ligands bound vs. the structure without hormone. We are also engaged in some mutation studies in which the Computer Graphics Lab will be used to select sites to mutate, the mutations will be made, and the resulting structures will be analyzed. We will also be modelling known mutations from human diseases onto our native structural model.